We Are Not ImmuneOriginal in 7/04 Issue of Harper's Magazine - Ronald J. Glasser, M.D.

Death is inevitable, but not disease. The difference may be as simple as washing our hands or keeping the wastes of industrialized farming out of the water supply, but it is often much more complicated. Bacteria and viruses are no mean adversaries, nor are they easily defeated. If we fail to be watchful or to protect those most at risk, a public-health catastrophe is inevitable, and yet somewhere within the span of the last thirty years the idea of the common good has disappeared from our national consciousness, giving way to the misconception that we no longer need concern ourselves with the welfare of our fellow citizens.

The government's cybersecurity chief has abruptly resigned from the Homeland Security Department amid a concerted campaign by the technology industry and some lawmakers to persuade the Bush administration to give him more authority and money for protection programs.

Amit Yoran, a former software executive from Symantec, made his resignation effective Thursday as director of the National Cyber Security Division, giving a single day's notice of his intention to leave.

President George Bush is “the best recruiting sergeant ever for al Qaeda,” said Sir Ivor Roberts, the British ambassador to Italy, at a closed conference of British and Italian diplomats. According to the September 21 edition of the British-based Guardian, Roberts let the comment slip during a discussion on which candidate Europeans would back if they voted in U.S. elections. Most would vote John Kerry, Roberts said, but “if anyone is ready to celebrate the eventual reelection of Bush, it’s al Qaeda.”

The British government of Tony Blair understandably condemned Roberts’ remarks. But among many international observers, his off-the-cuff comments have become conventional wisdom.

As he prepares to debate Halliburton CEO turned Vice President Dick Cheney, Senator John Edwards would do well to study up on his Harry Truman. The buck-stops-here President had a word for war profiteering: "treason." He had another word for those political and business leaders who condone "waste, inefficiency, mismanagement and profiteering" during a time of war: "unpatriotic." If John Kerry's running mate wants to have a greater impact in his debate with the Vice President--which follows hard on the first presidential debate--than did the woefully inept Joe Lieberman when he faced Cheney in 2000, Edwards has to drop the faux friendliness of the Washington elites whom Truman so disdained in favor of blunt talk about Cheney, starting with his Halliburton connections.

AUSTIN, Texas -- This column is not about the presidential debate. It's about Other Stuff.
Particularly eye-catching are the updates on the price of gasoline, your overtime pay, why the company most likely to hold the mortgage on your house could go broke, why you're getting peanuts from new tax cuts just passed by Congress and how the government is kicking hundreds of thousands of kids off health insurance while promising not to. Cheer all around.